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November 5, 2006

Interesting poll numbers

Invamer-Gallup in Colombia put out a new poll last week of 1,000 Colombians in 4 cities. (See a summary of its findings on Semana magazine's website.) It has several interesting results, such as a 6-point drop in Álvaro Uribe's popularity in the last month.

One new development is that those polled now view Colombia's human-rights NGOs almost as favorably as the armed forces, 69 to 71 percent, respectively:

Favorability ratings of various institutions

This is new, as of a few months ago. Since Gallup started asking opinions of human rights NGOs in October 2003, the military was usually about ten percentage points more popular. That ended in the middle of this year, with the two now running almost equal. The armed forces' unfavorability ratings, meanwhile, exceeded those of human-rights NGOs for the first time in June, and have stayed that way.

Favorability ratings of various institutions
(I constructed this chart using Gallup's detailed poll results, which don't appear to be available online.)

While both are very popular among those polled, the drop in the military's ratings no doubt results from the series of scandals that have hit the army this year (torture of recruits, the Jamundí massacre, dressing up murdered civilians as guerrillas killed in combat, false car bombings). It is interesting, meanwhile, to see that Colombia's much-maligned human-rights groups are now one of the most favorably viewed entities in the country.

Posted by isacson at November 5, 2006 11:34 PM

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